Peace Be With You
by Thalia Kendall
Summary: [slight OoTP spoilers] Angelina Johnson, on the train ride home from Hogwarts, reflects... and meets with a rival. And in this last day, they find a curious sort of peace. Oneshot fic.


A/N: This isn't QUITE a shipperfic, although it could certainly be construed thus, and yes, I do ship these two together. Yes, yes… another of my insane minor character ships… but dammit, it works XD. Dedicated to the w00bie Ray. Review and I'll love you.

Disclaimer: Anyone who thinks that I am JKR is very silly. Anyone who actually reads disclaimers is almost just as silly.

~*~ Peace Be With You ~*~

Their compartment was oddly silent. Perhaps it was the lack of Oliver Wood and the twins. After all, Oliver, exuberant Quidditch fanatic, was gone... gone to play for Puddlemere. And the twins...  
  
Angelina pressed her lips together and gave a sigh.  
  
Gred and Forge. Fred and George. They'd entered Hogwarts with a bang (she remembered one of them, back when she couldn't tell them apart, throwing a wet-start at a mean-looking boy whom she'd later find out was Marcus Flint on the train, their first year).   
  
They left with a bang, too. The banging of a door broken through and of windows slamming shut...  
  
And the painful thudding of hearts, of those who knew them.  
  
She wasn't sure what to think. She wasn't sure. No one was sure, any more.  
  
Alicia and Katie were engaged in a half-hearted game of Exploding Snap. All three were on their last train ride... their last moments of childhood.  
  
They were finished with school. It was only now, before the train would pull into the station, that they would be girls and not women.  
  
Then, why was it that they didn't have anything to say?  
  
Were they growing apart already?  
  
Angelina frowned to herself, troubled at the thought.  
  
No... that wasn't it. They were just... not sure what to say, because there was too much and too little and it was still too near.  
  
They were still expecting owls over the summer and shopping for school supplies in August, rifling through Quidditch books together in Diagon Alley, excited girls clasping each other's hands like children, wide bright smiles on their young faces.  
  
Their minds had not grasped that it wasn't going to be like that any more, yet.  
  
But they knew, and there was a sobriety in the compartment that wasn't, she decided, just due to the absence of the twins' firecracker personalities.  
  
She abruptly stood, tall, upright, all spry limbs and easy grace and determined brown eyes, long hair in a ponytail. Without a word, she opened the door to the compartment, and walked out... to...  
  
Perhaps the snack trolley?  
  
~*~  
  
For most of them, the year had been a matter of survival. They were in the know, of course. They realized who held the power that year... and it was a matter of principle, for them, to live against the odds.  
  
They were hated, but this wasn't new. And they were leaving.   
  
He listlessly glanced at the other occupants of the compartment. Cassius and Adrian and Terence... he'd played with all three. The first was reading, a tome on duelling. His own survival, in a way. From what he knew of Warrington's existence, his life was a battlefield, and to survive was to fight.  
  
Warrington. War. War which would come. Blood which would be spilled. Montague looked at his teammate for a few moments, wondering which side he'd be on. No one quite knew. Warrington, for his own purposes, never overtly supported either.  
  
But it was Slytherin, the House of Secrets.  
  
Adrian Pucey was merely dozing in his seat, his snores muffled by a Silencing spell that Warrington had cast as soon as they'd started. He still had a year, though. One more year of the sheltered normalcy of the school.  
  
Terence Higgs had another year, too. Not that he thought much about heavy issues, in any case. The former Seeker's face, described by girls of all Houses as 'roguishly handsome', 'charming', and other such similarly nauseating epithets, was quite firmly buried in what appeared to be a Playwizard magazine.  
  
He wouldn't be seeing these housemates again... at least, not in the near future. There would no longer be practices. They were to separate...  
  
He was never one for close camaraderie. Or for lachrymose reminiscing. Memories were not the most pleasant of thoughts to indulge in when passing one's time.  
  
He stood and left in search for something to drink.  
  
~*~  
  
"Two chocolate frogs, a bag of Bertie Botts' Every Flavour Beans, and some butterbeer, please," She was just finishing her order. The kindly witch who pushed the snack trolley nodded, and stooped down to look for the requested delectables.   
  
Montague's quiet footsteps led him close to where the snack trolley was at a halt, and a girl, dark hair in a ponytail down her back, was handing over a few silver coins. "You're all set, dearie," the witch was saying, handing the girl her purchases, before catching sight of him. "Why, hello there. And what would you like?"  
  
Just as he stepped forward to ask for a Butterbeer, she turned around, and they almost collided with each other, in a moment of gasps and wide shocked eyes and a step forward on both their parts and an arm hitting a broad chest and a bottle falling to the floor...  
  
"Shite!"   
  
She was glaring at him, her drink pooling gold fluid and creamy foam on the ground, the sweet scent and smooth liquid hiding shards of shattered glass. His face held only surprise for a few moments, before he muttered something, perhaps an apology or perhaps a curse, that she could not make out, and then her shoes were cleaned once more, the spill on the ground gone. His wand was out, although he was putting it back.  
  
He was so close that she could feel the warmth from the wand as he'd performed that _Reparo_, and she wondered if she should snap, or perhaps back away.   
  
The snack trolley was still there, the witch watching them with beady eyes. He wordlessly side-stepped her, and handed the witch money for two bottles of butterbeer.  
  
Before she could leave, he'd pushed one, none-too-gently, into her hands.  
  
She wasn't sure if she should be angry. "Why did you do that?"  
  
He shrugged. Well... he wasn't EXPECTED to. But outside of the world of bitter rivalry and the need to win, he wasn't a COMPLETE barbarian.  
  
How to say that, though...  
  
"Never mind," she scowled slightly, "I could have gotten one for myself."  
  
"I'm aware," the words were slightly more harsh than he might have intended. But then, perhaps he was not used to this... to being 'gentlemanly' in any sense, around her.  
  
Her eyes darkened from hazelnut to ebony when she was incensed. "Well you know what, Montague? You can just stuff the pseudo-nice-guy act up your arse... I know it's not you!"  
  
But as soon as the words had left her mouth, so did the anger.   
  
She was eighteen! Head Girl! HONESTLY... more maturity was called for.  
  
He was halfway towards the door back to his compartment when her voice, softer and more hesitant than he'd ever heard from HER, bold Gryffindor, reached his ears. "I'm sorry, that was out of line."  
  
When he slowly turned around, she was half-expecting a condemning, hateful glare... the sort of look that him and his team gave them during the games, the fiery rivalry...  
  
But his face was rather impassive. His eyes darkened, deepened... from cold ice to deep ocean when he was calm...  
  
His lip curled up slightly, in... well, she didn't think he was one to smile a lot. Quiet, haughty Slytherin. Moody rival.  
  
It wasn't quite a smirk, though.  
  
"I'd never thought I would live to see the day, you saying sorry," he remarked evenly.  
  
"Don't get your hopes up," she retorted, sliding into the seat of an empty compartment. "I didn't, either."  
  
"I'd be appalled if you did, Johnson." He gazed at her, sitting down across from her, not too close, long legs stretched out and crossed under the table.   
  
They didn't have much to say. All they knew of each other was hatred and rivalry, for that had been their existence up unto this point.  
  
To go out of that comfort zone would have been overly awkward, even if both were putting on a semblance of maturity and civility.  
  
So they were silent as they sipped their butterbeers, occasionally gazing out the window or at the table, sometimes eyes landing on each other. But those times were brief, accidental, the meeting of blue and brown as fleeting as the sizzle of cool water on hot iron. A crackle and a mist.  
  
"And where are your friends?"  
  
He assumed that it was his teammates that she was talking about.   
  
"Reading, sleeping and ogling Playwizard bints," he answered simply, bluntly. "I'll tell them you said hi."  
  
She laughed at that. Both knew that he wouldn't. And that his friends couldn't care less, really... "Mine were playing Exploding Snap last time I was with them," she remarked.   
  
"That's nice."  
  
Both of them weren't ones for small talk, and there was another silence. She stared down at his hands. Long fingers, like a musician's except far less smooth. There was what looked like a small scar from a healed burn, a tiny line of skin slightly darker than normal, near his knuckles. Probably a Potions burn. No rings or any other adornment, but a simple silver watch, with a black face.  
  
She finished her drink in his company, and looked up. He was still sipping his, somewhat absentmindedly, perhaps deep in thought.   
  
Had he been a friend, she might have interrupted with 'A sickle for your thoughts'. But as it was...  
  
She studied him from partly lowered eyes, and if he noticed, he didn't say anything.   
  
By the time he had finished his drink, she knew that there was remoteness in his eyes, and it wasn't so much animosity as... a separation from the other inhabitants of the world.  
  
He stood when he'd finished his drink, idly throwing the empty bottle into a nearby wastebasket. Not a hard throw, like with a Quaffle.   
  
She tossed her own bottle, and both of them, as if by unspoken agreement or perhaps just by... chance or coicidence... stepped out of that compartment. In a gesture that she deemed uncharacteristically gentlemanly, he held the door open until she could exit, her sleeve brushing against his.  
  
"I'm playing for Puddlemere," she blurted out.  
  
With Oliver Wood. He nodded, looking at her.  
  
"I'm studying abroad," he returned, "Salem University, in the States."  
  
Halfway around the world. No more rivalry and Quidditch games and hateful challenging glares and narrowed eyes and...  
  
No more spite.  
  
"I won't be seeing you, then."  
  
"No, you won't."  
  
Unsure of what to do at that, she bit her lip, as if struggling to come to a decision. And she proferred a slim hand.  
  
He stared for a moment, not expecting it, before taking it in his own, larger one. A brief shake.  
  
"Goodbye, Montague."  
  
"Goodbye, Johnson."  
  
And both turned and walked away, in their opposite directions.   
  
Angelina flexed her fingers as she went back to Alicia and Katie and...  
  
Last time they'd shaken hands was on the pitch, and his grip, inside the cold surface of Quidditch gloves, had been bruising.  
  
But his hands were slightly warmer than that, and his handshake was firm, but not hard.   
  
Was this making peace, then?   
  
As she sat down next to Katie again, nibbling idly on a Chocolate frog, she gazed at the darkening sky, navy blue...  
  
And thought of how his eyes weren't as icy when he was calm.


End file.
